Welcome to the Machine Learning and OPTimization Lab (MLopt Lab)!

Principal Investigator

Chong Liu Assistant Professor of Computer Science, SUNY Albany

Lab Members

Honglan Chen PhD Student in Electrical and Computer Engineering (since Fall 2026) Research Interests: Language model steering methods Hobbies: Swimming, skiing, and yoga

Jawad Hossian PhD Student in Computer Science (since Fall 2025) Research Interests: Language model reasoning First-author paper: HintMR: Eliciting Stronger Mathematical Reasoning in Small Language Models [ArXiv] Hobbies: Photography, reading books, traveling

Zakaria Shams Siam PhD Student in Computer Science (since Fall 2024) Research Interests: AI for drug discovery, Bandit algorithms First-author publications: [2] Multi-objective coverage via constraint active search (AAMAS-2026) [ArXiv] [1] Quantum non-linear bandit optimization (AAAI-2026) [ArXiv] Hobbies: Science-fiction novels and films

Alumni

Yusuke Ozaki Visiting Undergrad Student in Computer Science (2025 - 2026) Research Interests: AI for lab automation, Bayesian optimization First-author paper under review at TMLR Hobbies: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, reading books

Sponsors